Detroit's 983-acre island park is suffering, like most other parts of Detroit.
Matt Helms of the Free Press reports that if Detroit is to restore Belle Isle to the regional treasure it once was, it will take a combination of public money -- funds the city doesn't have -- and private-sector support only now beginning to be lined up, experts say. That's what other large cities are doing.
"The equation has to bring new funds somehow," Rich Dolesh, a vice president of the National Recreation and Park Association, told Helms.
Cities across the country are struggling to maintain their parks, and Dolesh said they're confronting difficult questions like those raised by a proposal for the State of Michigan to lease Belle Isle, likely for decades, turning it into a state park run by the Department of Natural Resources and charging a first-ever annual entry fee for motorists to help pay for needed improvements.
